You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself. Eleanor Roosevelt
Meditation: Parenting has been and still is the most complex journey of learning about myself I have ever taken. My children have challenged me to become a better mother and a better person. With “better” I mean a more conscious person, especially now that they can give me poignant feedback. “Mom, when you look down at your phone when you are standing in front of the cashier, you seem disrespectful”. “Mom, please, don’t speak so loud on the phone. That sounds like you are angry.” “Mom, when you always remind me, I can’t grow up and do the things I need to do on my own”. Especially now as teenagers, they tell me that they have their own life to live, and that my way or my style is not necessarily theirs. At the same time they sometimes surprise me by telling me that they want to have at least two jobs and have at least two children, just like me. They say that they read about feminism and are interested in psychology and in spiritual things. What Eleanor Roosevelt says is true. I need to refrain from identifying too much with my daughters’ lives and instead continue working on myself and trusting that who I am will have a positive influence on them.
Prayer: God of growth and of freedom, thank You for the awesome and humbling journey of being a parent. Thank You for the sometimes eye opening and even painful feedback of my daughters. Thank You that they are becoming their very own women by pushing away and by pushing against me. Thank You that they nevertheless love me and allow me to influence them. Help me to be humble enough to never stop working on myself, so that they will do the same. Amen
Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. 1. Peter 5: 2-3
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